There Goes My Life
by littledaybreaker
Summary: Sequel to "Pink Bedroom". Little Carly grows up, and so do her parents. Shenanigans ensue. Creddie, Spam, I don't know what happened with the pairings.


A/N: this is a sequel to Pink Bedroom, set five years after the events of Pink Bedroom and told, for the most part, in a series of flashbacks. it was...a labor of love. I began writing it maybe 2 or 3 days after I published Pink Bedroom and finished it five months later.

I'm also not sure what happened with the pairings here. At some point, it just started to write itself. I don't even know, I don't even know, I don't even know. Maybe no matter how hard I try, I just can't write Seddie. Oh well? Onward!

It was strange to be back here, Sam thought, holding Carly's hand and crossing the threshold of the elementary school on her first day of kindergarten. Where it had all began-if her mother hadn't sent her here, she never would have met the other Carly, never would have met Freddie, and she certainly wouldn't be standing here now, twenty one years old, sending her daughter off to kindergarten.

She allowed herself a moment to imagine it, but unlike the early days of Carly's life when sleep was sparse and everything seemed miserable and bleak, it no longer gave her any comfort. No, a life without either of the Carlys (and even without Freddie) wasn't something that Sam wanted to imagine anymore, no matter how much it had changed them, no matter how out of place she so often felt (especially in situations like these, where she felt like she'd just been transported to another planet), no matter how much harder their lives had been than other people their age in the past five years, it was their life and she didn't want anything more.

The bell rang, and the other kids (and their mothers) started shuffling toward the open classroom door. Carly clenched Sam's hand a little tighter and Sam bent to address her. "You scared?" she asked, petting Carly's soft, crooked braid, and Carly nodded.

"I wanna stay at home with you and Spencer," she whispered, and Sam pulled her in close.

"Listen," she said, pulling away and putting on her man-to-man voice. "You're a Puckett, and you know what that means?"

"I'm better than them and if they try to tell me otherwise, don't be afraid to punch a nub," Carly recited, and Sam ruffled her hair. "That's my girl," she said, taking Carly's hand again and leading her up to the classroom, where the smiling teacher greeted them. "Who do we have here?" she asked Carly, and Carly gave Sam one last look before letting go of Sam's hand and folding her arms across her chest. "Carly Benson," she replied. "Who are you?"

The teacher laughed. "I'm Mrs Brookfield. It's nice to meet you, Carly. Why don't you say goodbye to your..." she looked at Sam, seemingly scrutinizing, and Sam was about to get mad when she said, so easily that Sam wondered if she had imagined the pause, "...mommy and go play? We have dinosaurs!"

at the mention of Carly's second favorite d-word (aside from donuts), she was off with little more than a "Bye mom!", already shoving a little boy for his triceratops. Mrs Brookfield turned back to Sam (who was staring down at the carpet-blue with gold and silver stars and planets-and feeling rather sorry for herself) and put a hand on her arm. "She's just fine, and you will be, too. It's only for a few hours."

Sam nodded, mumbled something that might have been a thank you, and then took off for the car so she could cry in peace.

Spencer was installed on the sofa watching Girly Cow in his underwear when Sam got home, and she flopped down next to him and leaned over to steal his cereal, pouting.

"How'd it go?" he asked, seemingly unconcerned with her food theft.

"they had dinosaurs and she didn't want to say goodbye to me," Sam replied between bites of Sugar-Topped SugarOs.

Spencer smiled. "Sounds successful," he said, and was surprised when he turned to face her and saw that she was crying. "Hey! Hey now, why are we crying? Stop crying! This is stressing me out!"

Sam put the bowl on the floor and flung herself at Spencer, sobbing. "SHE DIDN'T WANT TO SAY GOODBYE TO ME," she howled. "MY BABY WASN'T SAD THAT I WAS LEAVING HER AT KINDERGARTEN!"

Spencer stroked her hair and reflected on just how far they'd really come.

It poured rain again the day they brought Baby Carly home from the hospital, and nobody spoke on the drive home, Carly in the front seat and Sam and Freddie in the back, just the same as they had been four days before, but this time, they had a baby-their baby-nestled asleep between them in the ultra-safe child restraint contraption Spencer had bought for her, and the whole world was different now.

Freddie carried her up to the apartment as cautiously as he might have carried a new computer and made a big fuss over undressing and redressing her and feeding her a bottle while Sam watched the whole thing transpire from the sofa, eating crackers and trying not to laugh too hard at him, and Carly the elder helped Spencer make sure that the crib was put together properly and wouldn't spontaneously combust, and then, after three outfit changes and four diapers and two bottles, he called his mother over to meet her new grandchild.

Mrs Benson arrived with three gallon tubs of hand sanitizer, a bulk pack of surgical masks, twenty packages of antibacterial wipes, gloves, and several brightly wrapped packages for the baby. She handed the presents to Sam and attempted to force a mask on her face before swooping in and scooping Carly out of Freddie's arms.

"Mom!" he protested, sort of flailing about in bewilderment. "What are you doing?"

"Fredward," she said, and Sam couldn't suppress a snort, "You are not wearing gloves OR a mask. You mustn't handle the baby without a mask or gloves! You know what they say, 'your mouth is dirty, full of germs, if you don't mask it, instead of a cradle, your baby will sleep in a casket!' Here." still holding Carly (who, in spite of all of this, hadn't moved) with one arm, she forced Freddie into a surgical mask and gloves and then placed Carly back into his arms, satisfied. Apparently, this was the final straw for the baby, who finally stirred, took one look at Freddie, and started to scream.

And scream she did-ear splitting howls at the seeming indignity of being born, for at least four hours a day, for three months straight, no matter what they tried, and Sam began to wonder if it was too late to bring her back and demand some sort of reparations for the fact that this shrieking feature was ruining their lives. Because no matter how much you love the people you live with, she felt like they all sort of resented her for bringing this screaming, tireless creature into their lives, and, in the middle of the night, when they all took turns milling around, desperately singing every public domain lullaby they could remember to try to get her to just shut up, please shut up, just for an hour, Carly wasn't the only one screaming.

"you only held her for fifteen minutes," Sam accused Carly, one such interminable night at 4:30, when the baby was on hour six of an all-night howl festival. "I've been holding her for an hour and a half. My arms are asleep." And Carly, who had been dozing (or trying to) on the sofa opened one eye and replied, "She's your kid," which made Sam almost fling said kid at her. "You promised me that you'd help me with her," she said instead, trying to keep her voice even. "remember? You promised."

although it was coming, she should have known it was coming, Sam could never have prepared herself for what Carly said next. "she's your kid, Sam. You...did it, you got pregnant, and you need to be the one who takes most of the responsibility for her, and if you don't like that, then you can leave."

And she almost did. If Spencer (who claimed that he was awake anyway) hadn't have woken up, scooped the baby up, forced Carly and Sam to hug, and sent them both off to bed, she would have probably walked out that door that night and not regretted it even a little bit, because she hadn't asked for all of his, hadn't wanted it, and as far as she was concerned, didn't deserve to have to deal with it. She was done.

But from there, it got better. Carly slept at night, only cried when it was really necessary, Freddie's mother stopped coming over all the time to make sure their hygiene was up to her absurd standards, and Freddie started coming around more often, and Sam was glad, in some way, that she hadn't thrown it in just yet. They were a family, she constantly reminded herself, and all families went through these things. They were going to be okay. Just like Carly had always promised.

Carly decided to give up her all night screaming parties just in time for Carly the elder, Sam, and Freddie to return to school in September. Sam hadn't wanted to go. But Spencer had managed to work his Spencer Shay magic and pull some strings to let her re-write the exam she'd missed when she went into labor, and there was part of her that sort of felt obligated (or maybe it was that Spencer had threatened an embargo on her fried chicken and ham supply) to go because he'd worked so hard to give that to her. So they left baby Carly in Spencer's loving but not entirely capable hands (once they had returned from a run to the Groovy Smoothie to find that Spencer had somehow managed to put Carly's diaper on backwards, and in the process, ripped off the tabs. He had used duct tape to compensate) and trekked back to school, all of them with somewhat more trepidation than they had felt the previous year.

It had become evident to the population at large that when Sam's water broke in front of the entire grade that she was, in fact, pregnant, which did nothing but fuel the rumor mill. By noon, she had learned that she had not only sold the baby to a couple in Portland for steak, but that the baby also bore a mysterious resemblance to Socko and/or Nevel and/or T-Bo, that she fed her only fried chicken and that child services had been called on them at least six different times by six different people. In a previous life it would have made Sam laugh to hear all of this ridiculousness, so many people who thought they knew anything about things they were really clueless about, but it tied her stomach up in knots to hear people say anything bad about that baby, that baby that they all worked so hard to take care of. She would later tell Carly that she spent more time in the principal's office on her behalf the year she was born than she had spent in her entire prior eleven years of school.

Somehow (even Sam couldn't quite explain _how_, at least in her case-she had always known that Carly and Freddie would make it), through balancing diapers and formula and sleeplessness and endless piles of homework and spit up stained onesies, detention and doctor's appointments and iCarly (which baby Carly _did _make regular appearances in, starring in such sketches as "The Idiot Farmgirl and The Baby That She Thought Was A Miniature Poodle" and "Giant Baby Destroys (No-Name Plastic Building Brick) Manhattan" and "Guess That Smell With Gibby! (Diaper Edition)"), they managed to graduate just after baby Carly's first birthday. And then Freddie went off to tech nub school and Carly went to art school, and Sam, with her lack of desire to do any more school-related anything ever (and, she claimed, baby Carly to worry about) decided that she was going to be Spencer's assistant.

It was through this that Sam discovered her love for sculpture, and then, later, her love for Spencer, which, she would reflect later, shouldn't have been as surprising as it was. But she had spent so much of her time wrapped up in Freddie and Carly and worrying about Carly growing up the same way she had because her parents weren't together that she had failed to see what had been in front of her all along.

As it turned out, when Spencer wasn't actively working on a sculpture (either one he wanted to make or a commission) being a sculptor involved a lot of cartoons, not getting dressed, playing with Lego, taking five million pictures of Carly, and eating cereal straight out of the box, which just so happened to be some of Sam's favourite hobbies. On this particular day off, Sam and Spencer were curled up on the sofa, watching a rerun of Girly Cow while Carly napped, and for some reason Sam's thoughts drifted and before she had time to think about what she was talking about, she turned to Spencer and asked, "Remember when I had that little crush on you when I was a kid?"

"Yeah." Spencer turned to face her, leaning forward like a little kid. "What happened with that, anyway?"

_Life, _Sam thought. _Reproduction with Freddie. Thirteen years between us. _But she looked at him, leaning forward like a little boy waiting for a Christmas present, _really _looked at him for the first time since Carly was born, and before she had time to think about what she was saying, the words tumbled out of her mouth like they were racing to beat her brain. "Nothing. I still have a little crush on you."

Spencer looked at her as though he was considering her for the first time, and at first he didn't say anything for so long that it started to freak Sam out and she looked away, arms folded across her chest. When she looked back up at Spencer she was surprised to find his face nearly touching hers, grinning. "Hey, Sam," he asked. "Sam. Sam. You're nineteen now, right?"

Much to Sam's surprise, she found herself with absolutely no inclination to pull away. "Right..."

"That means you're an adult, right. I mean. Sort of. Legally. So. That means that nobody is going to burst through the door and arrest me if..." He leaned in, pressing his lips against hers just for a second. Sam blinked in surprise and froze. _This is wrong, _she told herself. _This is your best friend's brother and you are going to be in so much trouble with her when she comes home from college. _But if there was one thing Sam loved more than anything except maybe baby Carly, it was getting in trouble, and so instead of pulling back, instead of pretending it had never happened, she reached for Spencer, pulled him in close, and kissed him back.

They spent the rest of the afternoon like that, curled up and sometimes kissing, until Carly woke up from her nap and flung herself between them and demanded "cake cakes and juice", and by then Sam knew that no matter how crazy and random a happenstance this was, maybe this was what she had been waiting for her entire life.

So it didn't hurt when Carly and Freddie came back for Christmas and Carly had a ring on her finger, and it was only a little awkward when Spencer blurted out "It's okay that you're in love with Carly, Freddie, because I'm in love with Sam, so I approve of that life choice" and Carly stared at him like he had three heads and mouthed "REALLY?" at Sam, who scuffed her feet and grinned at the ground and said, "Hey, Carly, why don't you show daddy and Carls what you learned how to do?" to completely change the subject, which caused Carly to run for a pencil and a pad of paper so she could clumsily write "C-A-R-L-Y" and Freddie and Carly could ooh and ahhh over her, and later, once Carly was tucked up in bed and Spencer and Freddie sat on the couch and did whatever it was that Spencer and Freddie did during their times of bonding, Carly and Sam sat in the room they had once shared (now apparently to be shared by Carly and Freddie, especially because Sam had moved out months ago in favor of sleeping with Spencer). "Tell me everything!" Carly demanded, flopping down on the bed. Sam threw a pillow at her. "You first!"

"You're the one dating my brother!"

Sam lunged at Carly, tackled her playfully. "You're the one who's marrying my baby daddy!"

Carly giggled, squirmed. "Okay, okay, fine. Let go!" Sam released her, looking expectantly at her. "Well?"

"It was weird," Carly admitted. "And I wasn't sure you were going to be okay with it, at first, because of baby Carly, but he admitted that he'd never stopped loving me and you and he weren't really going anywhere and...the engagement happened so fast but you know how Freddie is and, I don't know. He's kind of everything I want in a man and I didn't even realise it while he was right in front of me, you know?"

Sam looked over at Carly, incredulous and very, very amused. "God, Carls, if you weren't so good all the time I would swear we were the same person. Except me and Spencer were watching Girly Cow in our underwear and then we made out."

Carly rolled her eyes. "Romantic," she remarked. "Sounds like you and Spencer."

Sam rolled over, resting her head in her hands, her elbow holding her up. "Are you mad?" she asked. "That I'm dating your brother."

It took Carly a moment, because she was clearly considering how best to answer this question. "Are you mad that I'm dating Freddie?"

"That's different," Sam said dismissively, shaking her head. "We had a kid together, he's not...my brother or something."

"I think most people consider having a kid together a pretty serious commitment, you know," Carly pointed out, but Sam's entire response was to shrug and persist, "You didn't answer my question," and Carly looked down and picked at the duvet a little.

"It's weird," she said finally. "I mean, he's my brother and he practically raised me, and I don't understand what you see in him, but all I've ever wanted for you was for you to be happy and if he makes you happy then what am I going to do about it? You always did have a little crush on him."

"He does make me happy," Sam conceded, and then reached to pull Carly in a hug. "And hey, we really are like a family now."

Carly smiled into Sam's hair, nodded. "We really are like a family now."

Freddie looked in on Carly one last time, stroking her soft fuzzy head and kissing her cheek before creeping out of her bedroom, which had once been the iCarly studio. When he reached the doorway, he couldn't help looking back, studying the room. It hadn't changed much since they'd packed it in a year ago, when they had graduated high school and realized that it couldn't last forever, the only major difference being that once Carly had graduated from the crib, Spencer had turned the car into a bed for her, complete with a car horn alarm (although what a toddler needed with an alarm, nobody was entirely sure), and Freddie allowed himself a brief moment of nostalgia. The little boy who had dragged his AV equipment up here for the first time out of sheer love and devotion for Carly seemed like someone entirely different from the man he had become. Shaking his head, Freddie padded in to give Carly one last kiss on the head before turning and shutting the door behind him, heading downstairs to join Spencer.

"Root beer?" Spencer asked, getting up and going to the fridge, handing Freddie one before he had time to answer.

"Thanks." Freddie sat on the couch, staring aimlessly at whatever ridiculous thing Spencer had on TV.

"Baby Carly got to sleep okay?"

"Yeah. What are we watching?"

"Dunno. Some thing."

"Okay."

They sat in silence for several long minutes, drinking the root beer and staring at the television. When the credits rolled, Spencer turned the TV off and regarded Freddie. "If you hurt my sister, I'll tie you to a chair and light all of your computers on fire one by one while cackling evilly. Got it?"

Freddie blinked. He couldn't decide if he should laugh or be terrified, so instead he nodded his consent. "And if you hurt Sam, I'll destroy the bottle robot. Got it?"

Spencer cracked a smile, and Freddie could feel the corners of his mouth twitch in his own amusement. "You've got yourself a deal," he said, extending his hand for Freddie to shake.

Carly and Freddie were married six days before little Carly turned four, and for weeks thereafter she insisted on wearing her tiara and flower girl dress everywhere she went, including to sleep and to the splash park where she had her birthday party, until Carly had to wrangle it off of her while she was asleep and wash it before she woke up in the morning (because while Sam have grown up a lot in the four years since Carly was born, she still didn't see any problem with wearing the same clothes for days on end-"more time to do other, important stuff, like eat and pick locks," she explained), and at the end of the reception, as Spencer held her little sleeping body in his lap, she lifted her head, popped her thumb out of her mouth and asked, "Will you and mommy get married next time so I can be a princess again?"

A collective glance was shared across the table, and Freddie nudged Spencer. "Yeah, Spencer, she wants to be a princess again."

Spencer nearly spit out his drink. "I-uh-bler?" he stammered, looking over at Sam helplessly.

Sam rolled her eyes, wondering momentarily how she had ended up in a relationship where she was the most mature party, and shook her head. "I don't know, Carls, I don't think me and Spencer are ready for that kind of excitement yet. I mean, the very idea of marriage reduces him to a quivering blob of nonsense. Maybe when you're ten, kid."

Satisfied with that answer, Carly drifted back off to sleep, thumb in her mouth, tiara slightly askew.

They hadn't talked much about it after that-before Freddie mentioned it they had never even thought about it, and Sam hadn't been wrong when she said that they weren't ready for that kind of excitement yet, so it never came up again. Carly and Freddie had transferred to a school closer to home and were settling into married life (and talking about babies, an idea that, even after five years, made Sam instinctively want to flee in terror), little Carly was getting bigger (and sassier) by the second, getting ready to start Kindergarten in the fall, and there was so much else going on that marriage ranked slightly below "going to the dentist" on Sam Puckett's list of life priorities.

But here they were now, alone in the house while Carly and Freddie and little Carly were at school, curled up on the sofa, and for some reason, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world when Spencer looked up at the clock and informed her that it was just about time to get the little one, and then stood up and stretched and from his pocket produced a ring (which, upon further inspection, appeared to be crafted in the exact likeness of a piece of bacon), holding it out to her. "I made this this morning while you were dropping the little one off at school and I wasn't really paying attention to what I was making until it was already made, you know? and then I started thinking about how much you mean to me and how much everything has changed in the past five years and I realized that I don't really want to ever live without you so I was thinking that maybe we should get married, we can just go to the courthouse because I know that you don't like to be fancy or wear dresses and I'm pretty sure we don't even have to put on clean pants, just walk on down there and...", and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to get up on her tiptoes and kiss him to shut him up. "Yes, Spencer, I will marry you," she laughed, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him again, just for good measure. "Not even just because you gave me a bacon ring."

Spencer grinned. "You are the best woman ever and I love you so much and I'm so glad that we started making out in our underwear that day or I never would have gotten to know how awesome my life could be now _we need to go get the little one before she thinks we forgot her, let's go go go!"_

Carly was still in the classroom when Spencer and Sam arrived, sitting on the floor in a fortress made of giant blocks, making dinosaur noises at another little girl who was squealing and giggling. "Carly," Mrs Brookfield called. "Your mommy is here to get you."

All at once, Carly flung herself through the fortress (effectively destroying it) and ran straight for Sam, howling "!" and attempting to scale her legs. "Mommy, mommy, mommy, I had the best day ever, I met Lily and she had _dinosaur cheese_ and it was shaped like _dinosaurs _and so I stole some and she bit my arm and now we're _best friends _and tomorrow she's going to bring lots of dinosaur cheese for us to share and I played with blocks and on the swings and we read stories and I want to come back tomorrowwwwwwwwwwwww can I can I please mommy please? Oh. Hi Spencer!" Launching herself off of Sam, she attempted to scale Spencer's legs instead, repeating everything she had just told Sam and then rushing off to show him the sculpture she had made during art time.

Sam watched her race around, smiling so big her face hurt. This might not have been the life she had envisioned herself living in five years five years ago, and it might not have been perfect or ideal or even fun, but right now, she wouldn't have traded it-any part of it-for the world.


End file.
